[HN Gopher] Computers as I used to love them
___________________________________________________________________
Computers as I used to love them
Author : tosh
Score : 632 points
Date : 2022-01-07 11:04 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (tonsky.me)
(TXT) w3m dump (tonsky.me)
| tonymet wrote:
| What I miss is speed: computers in the 90s were extremely
| responsive. Apps opened instantly. the keyboard and mouse events
| responded instantly. Apps used < 10mb memory (sometimes KB).
|
| Somewhere in the last 15 years we "web-i-fied" every app and made
| the entire desktop UX dog slow.
|
| People just expect that every click and tap on a UI has a spinner
| - even in their car.
| [deleted]
| a-dub wrote:
| i mean, that's always been true. it's pretty rare when
| proprietary software is better than FOSS.
|
| the only reason why apple even became a reasonable option was
| because they went back to nextstep which was built on mach and
| various FOSS userland (rebranded as darwin).
| grumpyprole wrote:
| Bi-directional sync is notoriously difficult to get right. See
| for example the paper "Mysteries of Dropbox" or the contents of
| any iCloud users address book. I use Unison which I trust (based
| on their peer-reviewed publications) and has a good UI to resolve
| conflicts. It isn't clear to me how Syncthing deals with
| conflicts or problems.
| twobitshifter wrote:
| I've yet to run into the iCloud path problem mentioned in this
| post. Did Apple change the behavior?
| urban404 wrote:
| Hey, I love it! Would you like a spanish translation?
| fudged71 wrote:
| I can't find any reference to M1 Macs on Syncthing or Sincthing-
| macos. Any idea if both are compatible?
| betwixthewires wrote:
| I am a syncthing user and I absolutely love it.
|
| The author is right. When you get rid of corporate cruft,
| computers are just computers. They belong to you and they perform
| computation (and network operations). I use almost exclusively
| FOSS, and I hear the scary points like you'll be out of the loop,
| won't be able to talk to some friends, it's more maintenance,
| etc. Some of that is true some of the time, but the trade off is
| your machine does what you want it to do and only what you want
| it to do. It is well worth it.
| gtsnexp wrote:
| Have you heard of NextCloud (https://nextcloud.com/) ?
| prmoustache wrote:
| From my experience, the nextcloud android app autosync features
| are unreliable while I never had this problem on syncthing.
| pacifika wrote:
| It's indexing speed is slow
| 098799 wrote:
| Does it have a command line client?
| mab122 wrote:
| That requires you to have always on, central server running and
| stroing things. Devices running syncthing are run as equals.
| (or they can be configured not to be)
|
| One cool feature is also encrypted syncing where some nodes
| dont even have the key (ie VPS syncs but doesnt know what it
| syncs, and only _your_ devices have the key)
| southerntofu wrote:
| NextCloud is great but like any webapp suffers from bloatedness
| and cryptic errors. If you've ever tried uploading terabytes
| with the web client, you know what i'm talking about.
|
| Also, performance (read bandwidth usage) isn't all that great
| with NextCloud. PHP-FPM was more designed for concurrent
| execution of multiple stateless requests server-side (PHP) than
| for sending raw bytes as soon as possible to the disk.
| asicsp wrote:
| Past discussion: "Syncthing is everything I used to love about
| computers"
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23537243 _(June 2020, 159
| comments)_
|
| ---
|
| Recent discussion about the software: "Syncthing - a continuous
| file synchronization program"
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28859521 _(85 days ago, 230
| comments)_
| hwers wrote:
| Love this. As someone primarily from a web background I've been
| getting into binaries and low-end dev with minimal dependencies
| lately (basically a foreign concept a front-end native like me).
| It's really nice having something that won't disappear or change
| and you feel like you own.
| rcarmo wrote:
| Besides needing a (2020) in the title, this deserves some
| commentary.
|
| I switched from Dropbox to a mix of OneDrive and SyncThing in
| 2020 due to the bloat in their client app:
|
| switch: https://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2020/06/21/1600
|
| later: https://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2020/08/08/1900
|
| What I did, in a nutshell, was to remove the Dropbox client from
| all of my machines, link my Synology NAS to my Dropbox account
| (and to my OneDrive account, too, but for snapshotting) and then
| using the SyncThing client to sync all my git working trees while
| keeping Office docs and archives in OneDrive.
|
| I split things this way because I've worked across various
| machines and OSes since 2010 and wanted a way to have a
| consistent filesystem layout in all of them. I split things
| across two services because:
|
| - Both OneDrive and Dropbox have trouble with very high
| cardinality folders (like my 2.1GB git repos) that have hundreds
| of thousands (if not actual millions) of tiny files that change
| frequently (and that I may not want to have outside my LAN
| anyway).
|
| - OneDrive integrates with Office apps and is a pretty decent way
| to have off-site storage and shared online editing of a few
| hundred thousand "beefier" files (in my case, mostly personal and
| legal docs), as well as having a very generous 1TB free tier for
| each family member.
|
| Neither replaces backups, but (more to the point), neither is
| perfect. In SyncThing's case, I have a container running on my
| NAS as an introducer/master replica, and three different machines
| accessing it (Windows, Mac and Linux), and I keep having sync
| issues and conflicts in my git repos even though all versions are
| in lockstep.
|
| Ironically, I _never_ had a git repo corrupted while using
| Dropbox since... 2015? (I did when trying OneDrive, but that was
| mostly because I was using an OpenSource Linux client and it had
| sync issues). And yet, SyncThing keeps doing it every couple of
| months, to the extent where I need to reset some repos every now
| and then.
|
| SyncThing is pretty great in that I can switch off external
| discovery and be absolutely sure my stuff never leaves my LAN
| _and_ have things sync very quickly, but it's definitely not
| fully baked yet, and I wouldn't recommend using it without a good
| backup strategy (all my personal projects live in a gitea
| instance and that is backed up off-site as well).
|
| Also, there are hardly any good mobile clients (I have an iOS
| one, but it has trouble syncing large folders while running in
| the background and its Files integration is flaky). I could use
| just about any mobile editing app with Dropbox, and I have much
| more limited choices right now (OneDrive "works", but the Files
| provider also has issues).
| choward wrote:
| > I keep having sync issues and conflicts in my git repos even
| though all versions are in lockstep.
|
| Syncing git repos using a tool other than git seems like you're
| asking for trouble. Git is already meant to be used for
| distributing a repo to multiple computers. It's responsible for
| the "syncing".
|
| Let's say you have to computers. Both go offline. Then you make
| a guy commit on each computer. Then they go back online. What
| do you expect to happen? Even if there are no conflicts in the
| commits, your .git directory is going to be messed up.
| rcarmo wrote:
| Well, it wasn't in Dropbox. For many years.
| Naracion wrote:
| Previous discussion: June 2020, 306 points, 159 comments
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23537243
| bleachedsleet wrote:
| Oh good, more out of touch drivel on the front page of HN so
| people can gently reminisce about the good ol' days. This article
| is absurd, from premise to conclusion, and it took me a moment to
| realize it's not a satire of itself.
|
| 1. Dropbox and Syncthing are two different tools with two
| different use cases targeting two different kinds of users. I
| doubt they even see themselves in competition as surely the users
| are quite different. I stopped caring about direct sync when
| workstation computers were no longer the hub of my computer
| use...
|
| 2. ...seriously it's a mobile first world and you expect people
| to take Syncthing seriously as a Dropbox replacement?
|
| 3. The author is mad about things like "accounts" and "2FA" and
| "Gatekeeper". Sounds like they should go back to XP. I'm sure it
| works the way they used to love. Once again, comparing modern
| best practices with your power user impatience and impetuousness
| doesn't prove your point in any capacity.
|
| 4. This assumed power user is complaining about making an alias
| for the iCloud folder? And uses spaces in pathnames? If you're a
| programmer this isn't unusable because if you're a programmer you
| should know better. I agree with the author that the iCloud
| folder should be more visible on the CLI, but unusable? Strange
| how I've been using it daily. Guess I'm not a True Programmer.
|
| 5. What Dropbox UI is the author complaining about in the "Power
| Mode" section? A file picker directly copied from MacOS Finder
| but with checkboxes? This has to be a troll.
|
| 6. The author is mad about calendar sync because apparently they
| can't read basic copy on the Dropbox website that never markets
| the app as a "FILE SYNCHRONIZATION" service (boomer-level
| emphasis theirs). I don't use Dropbox either because it turns out
| I don't need a full teamwork collaboration tool - what Dropbox
| actually markets themselves as. This is a platform of work
| related tooling, not simply "commercial Syncthing." I imagine
| calendar tools as being part of this (clearly) stated goal.
|
| 7. "Wait there's more!" Please no. I think that's quite enough.
|
| Everyone can like what they like, but this is encroaching on "old
| man yells at cloud" territory.
| exfil wrote:
| I really would like to see Syncthing which is not built using Go.
| Plain C implementation would be more usable in various
| environments.
| samhw wrote:
| Can you not build it using gccgo? That will support all the
| targets that C - or at least C-by-GCC - supports.
|
| (I'm not saying this as a Go fanboy; having used it
| professionally for 3 years, I don't think I'll ever touch it
| again. But I don't think it's fair to say that the architecture
| support is bad.)
| cle wrote:
| Just curious, what environments are you referring to?
| qayxc wrote:
| All good and well, but isn't comparing Syncthing and Dropbox kind
| of apples to oranges?
|
| Dropbox has a completely different scope that goes beyond what
| Syncthing is offering. If you don't require the features Dropbox
| offers, it's the wrong tool in the first place.
| newaccount74 wrote:
| Both are solutions to sync a folder across multiple devices.
| The fact that dropbox added a bunch of extra features over the
| years is irrelevant to most users.
| qayxc wrote:
| That's like arguing Photoshop is too complicated compared to
| MS Paint, because both can resize and crop images.
|
| If all you want to do is syncing folders across devices, use
| a tool that does just that. Just to emphasize how this is
| relevant, here's what Dropbox says about what it is [0].
|
| > What is Dropbox?
|
| > Dropbox is a place where all your team's content comes
| together.
|
| There's nothing in that very first sentence of their own
| description of the product that suggests syncing folders
| across devices as a use case.
|
| Just because you can do that, too, doesn't mean it's the
| primary use case. Dropbox sees their product as a solution
| for collaborating across teams.
|
| But that's only one side, so let's look at the "Personal
| Use"-section [1]:
|
| > Back up your big ideas, your best memories and your family
| traditions.
|
| And again, syncing folders across devices isn't mentioned -
| they see Dropbox as a centralised backup solution.
|
| > Centralise your storage, declutter your life
|
| So they tell the user exactly how they see their product and
| the laborious installation process is a consequence of that.
|
| So while you see a product for syncing across devices, the
| product is advertised as a collaboration solution or a
| centralised storage for backup and device-independent global
| access.
|
| That's not me claiming this either, this is straight from the
| horse's mouth and what users are told.
|
| [0] https://www.dropbox.com/features
|
| [1] https://www.dropbox.com/plus
| Macha wrote:
| Dropbox wants users to see Dropbox as all these things
| because syncing is a table stakes feature for all their
| competitors now. So they add all these in search of a USP.
|
| From my experience though, their users (and not just the
| tech bubble) don't care. Someone who even opens the Web
| interface to access a file without a client/app installed
| counts as a power user. In fact as more people use aaS that
| hide the concept of files, a lot of those users are
| dropping off as they have all their docs in Google docs or
| photos in iCloud or whatever
| scbrg wrote:
| Huh. Perhaps. Last time I checked, Dropbox very much did
| claim that syncing data between devices was their primary
| use case. Perhaps they changed while I wasn't looking (I
| haven't been looking since they forced me to Syncthing by
| deciding that my filesystems weren't supported).
|
| Perhaps the author is coming from a similar place. History
| matters. If someone sells you a product, and then
| completely changes the scope of said product, it's a bit
| odd for people to complain when you start looking for
| alternatives that fit the scope of the product you
| initially bought, no?
| cestith wrote:
| Is it apples and oranges or is it a nice pair of paper scissors
| compared to a multitool with the little fold-out scissors?
| Often we carry the multitool because it mostly meets lots of
| different needs. Sometimes we just want a single focused tool
| that does its one job really well.
|
| There are lots of ways to sync or backup files and folders,
| each with their own quirks, advantages, and disadvantages.
| There's git, mercurial, OneDrive, Sharepoint, Dropbox, Google
| Drive/Google One, rsync, scp, NFS, Owncloud, Nextcloud,
| Crashplan, unison, snapback, Amanda, bacula, IDrive, Carbonite,
| Barracuda Backup, Veam, duplicity, DAR, bup, Acronis TrueImage,
| Veritas Backup Exec, HP Data Protector, Borg backup, Commodo
| Backup, and Windows/SAMBA shares over CIFS to name a minority
| of options. If every attempt met every need, there'd be far
| fewer tools for this.
| square_usual wrote:
| I love syncthing as much as the next guy on here, but this
| article feels very much like "why doesn't this square peg fit my
| round hole?!" Dropbox (and iCloud) are meant more for cloud file
| storage than pure device-to-device synce. I couldn't go to a less
| tech savvy friend and say, "Oh, you use Dropbox for backups?
| Here, use syncthing instead!" For one, most people don't have
| multiple computers they want to keep in sync, and even if they do
| it's unlikely that those multiple computers have overlapping
| periods of being online, which syncthing will need to keep back
| ups!
|
| The author's baffling reaction to iCloud and Dropbox's warning
| just makes my point. Those warnings are super clear to people who
| use those services for backup - remove this file and it won't be
| backed up, hence not available elsewhere. That isn't those
| platforms begging for attention (???). Remove those warnings and
| see how many normies complain to Apple/Dropbox that they didn't
| know removing a file from their synced folder meant it wouldn't
| be synced anymore. This also applies to the bizarre complaint
| about cloud storage space limits - of course you need storage
| space on the service if those files have to live elsewhere!
| ubermonkey wrote:
| >Dropbox (and iCloud) are meant more for cloud file storage
| than pure device-to-device synce
|
| Device to device sync was literally the value prop for Dropbox
| when it launched > 10 years ago. That's why I started using it.
|
| Dropbox does now allow a more cloud-native file system / cloud
| backup usage pattern, but its roots are absolutely "keep my
| files in sync across several computers."
| babypuncher wrote:
| 10 years ago, Dropbox was still storing your files on _their_
| servers so that your devices did not need to be online and
| accessible at all times in order to sync. It still operated
| in a fundamentally different manner than Syncthing. All that
| has really changed about the app is the marketing around it.
| brightball wrote:
| Yep and when it first came out it was by far the best option
| too. IMO it still is.
| josefrichter wrote:
| That was 10 years ago. Yes, I also started using it because
| of that. These days the the more important feature (at least
| for me) is being able to offload rarely used files from my
| drive. SSDs in MacBooks are still crazy expensive.
| senko wrote:
| > That was 10 years ago.
|
| That's exactly what the article author is saying.
| judge2020 wrote:
| This comment thread is about how the author doesn't seem
| to realize that the motive of these services has changed
| in response to fewer and fewer users wanting a sync
| solution versus a backup solution.
| 0x0nyandesu wrote:
| Way to take my thing and ruin it then be like "shut up it's
| old"
| janto wrote:
| How can you claim it's your thing? Customers ain't paying
| for that.
| black_puppydog wrote:
| Some were. But your point is valid; a company will move
| to what _most_ customers want. A FOSS application can
| keep servicing the (perhaps smaller) original crowd of
| users.
| zitterbewegung wrote:
| Why not buy an external drive instead? You could also use
| it as a backup.
| josefrichter wrote:
| External drives are a thing of history. Too much hassle,
| too much inconvenience, can't access anytime and anywhere
| I want, etc. What's the benefit of external drive
| compared to Dropbox really?
| kmtrowbr wrote:
| Dropbox works well for small files that you need to share
| with others. However, if you use it to back up large
| amounts of data ... say >100GB, the experience of using
| it is very poor. It consumes large amounts of CPU
| continually. It takes forever to run to completion
| (literally in some cases, in my case it ran for weeks
| before I gave up on it). An external hard drive is of
| comparable cost to Dropbox, and a one-time cost, not
| something you need to pay for, forever. It runs to
| completion in 20 minutes. You can keep multiple versions
| of it in different physical locations. It's conceptually
| simple with fewer points of failure.
|
| Personally I tried using several different cloud backup
| solutions, but I gave up on them. A few encrypted
| external hard drives, updated every month or two in a
| repeatable way (e.g. a bash script), one at home, one at
| work ... and backup is a solved problem. Of course, to
| each their own.
| josefrichter wrote:
| Then you had some problem. I have ~1TB in Dropbox, files
| small and large. No problems with sync. Once in a while
| it does go crazy, eats up a lot of CPU and takes 1 hour
| to get in proper sync. It's annoying, but luckily it's
| rare. And it goes with me everywhere. How do you access
| external drive from your phone anyway?
| bccdee wrote:
| It's cheaper and faster. What's the hassle or
| inconvenience of a separate drive? If anything, Dropbox
| is less convenient because it requires installing an
| application to use it.
|
| The only drawback is that you have to carry it around
| anywhere you want to access it. A modern external drive
| is the size of a phone though, so that's hardly a
| dealbreaker even if you do want to carry it around.
| Although frankly, cloud storage _is_ much better for
| filesharing.
| fabianhjr wrote:
| > being able to offload rarely used files from my drive.
|
| > SSDs in MacBooks are still crazy expensive.
|
| It sounds like an archival usage rather than syncing or
| sharing usage.
| josefrichter wrote:
| Well, above all, it's super convenient. The files stay
| where they are, you just mark them as "online only" and
| they don't take up space on your disk.
|
| When you click to open such file or folder, it will
| immediately download back to your disk and you can use it
| again. You will lose maybe a few seconds once in a blue
| moon when you need one of them. But you easily gain
| hundreds of gigabytes of space on your SSD. Just
| yesterday I right-clicked some folders to mark them
| "online only" and immediately gained +300GB free space..
|
| Plus of course you can access those files from your phone
| or ipad too, when needed. Basically I personally have
| _all_ my work files in Dropbox and don 't use additional
| backup (used Backblaze in the past).
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| >>Dropbox (and iCloud) are meant more for cloud file storage
| than pure device-to-device synce
|
| > Device to device sync was literally the value prop for
| Dropbox when it launched > 10 years ago.
|
| It's what was advertised. I find it interesting that its
| initial reception on HN is so frequently slammed for saying
| "we could already do this, if we wanted to", and then... 10+
| years later, Dropbox has had to switch to doing something
| people want.
|
| The only value I ever saw people getting from Dropbox was in
| using it as a way to hand off files to someone else across
| the internet. Which is a use case Dropbox has spent many
| years fighting against.
| thrower123 wrote:
| The only thing I ever use Dropbox for is requesting files
| from people that are too large or that their corporate
| Exchange environment prevents from being sent over email.
| 6510 wrote:
| _Computers as I used to love them_
|
| A work of poetry.
|
| > A major initial motivation for both the ARPANET and the
| Internet was resource sharing.
| 7thaccount wrote:
| It's crazy how much I enjoy simple software. No crazy
| complicated APIs and complex installs. Just give me a
| binary I can call with a command line interface. I can
| play with it interactivity and easily automated whenever
| needed.
| foodstances wrote:
| Startup idea: provide cloud backup service through Syncthing.
| End users install Syncthing and then add a remote host provided
| by your company that is bound to their account. That instance
| just keeps a copy of everything it receives on some cloud
| infrastructure. Slap a web interface and some modest data
| retention on it to recover files.
| posix86 wrote:
| That's software done _only_ with end users in mind. It's the
| same model as redhat uses. IT companies suffer from the fact
| that they resist changing the design of the product s.t. the
| company offers much less value in the equation.
| babypuncher wrote:
| That will probably ruin everything the author liked about it
| in this post, because then you will have to add account
| creation, verification, ans sign-in steps. The horror!
| benhurmarcel wrote:
| It doesn't have an iOS app ready though
| rizalp wrote:
| Here's hoping storage vendors (Backblaze, Wasabi, etc.) take
| note and sees this as worthwhile opportunity!
| netflixandkill wrote:
| Can already do that with rclone, although a one button
| setup for syncthing would likely get some play.
| tomxor wrote:
| "Cloud" is fundamentally just another device.
|
| Syncing is not a square peg, monetisation is.
|
| There is no reason why syncthing cannot work on both a server
| in the "cloud" and an end-user device. Syncing files is a well
| researched and solved problem, at this point dropbox et al are
| not selling syncing, they are reselling IaaS + integration and
| gaffataping on anything else tangentially related they can
| conceive of to squeeze money out of users.
|
| The fundamental value is already there to have for free and at
| a much higher UX quality, while paying for the IaaS directly...
| if only non-technical users were aware of it, and could access
| it as easily.
| squarefoot wrote:
| Exactly. It worked perfectly to sync my Android tablet data
| on my NAS, but I never tried it as a cloud file server.
| However it should be relatively easy to set up a VPN on a
| broadband (non NATted) connection, if it has a dynamic IP
| hook it to a free domain name using for example DuckDNS
| (.org), then redirect the VPN traffic to a *PI or similar
| board and a USB disk that will stay up 24/7, so that no
| matter when or from where, any other device with the right
| credentials can use that space as cloud storage from
| anywhere. The big difference being that there are no strings
| attached, no size caps, no sign this and that, no download of
| closed apps, no ads etc.
| midasuni wrote:
| If you change a file does it keep older versions?
| JackMcMack wrote:
| Versioning is supported:
|
| * keep x previous revisions, or
|
| * keep old revisions for x time, or
|
| * diy with hook script
|
| https://docs.syncthing.net/users/versioning.html
| contravariant wrote:
| I'm still looking for some way to have a nice (web) UI for
| this versioning though.
| bspammer wrote:
| Using "External File Versioning" on that page you could
| probably have it commit to a git repository. Then view
| that repository on GitHub or Gitlab to get nice diffs.
| globular-toast wrote:
| You can use Syncthing for "cloud" storage as long as you keep
| an instance online at all times. Syncthing's functionality is a
| superset of Dropbox etc. People absolutely use Dropbox for
| device-to-device sync. They are not necessarily interested in
| the "cloud" backup but just want to send a file to a mate.
| frosted-flakes wrote:
| Yes, except for "online-only" files and sharing files with
| others, which don't really work with Syncthing. But I use
| Syncthing heavily and have no use for those.
| weystrom wrote:
| I have a VPS in Digitalocean that's running syncthing ever
| since Untrusted Enrypted Storage[1] has been introduced last
| year.
|
| It's great, it's even better than cloud storage, since the VPS
| never has access to the encryption key.
|
| [1]
| https://docs.syncthing.net/branch/untrusted/html/users/untru...
| zafka wrote:
| I am saving this to read all the comments later. This is appears
| to be very close to what I was thinking of to replace my need for
| 3rd party cloud storage. Still need to add striping and
| encryption of files across various other computers. This will
| allow you to use a small group of trusted friends at different
| locations as your cloud.
| choward wrote:
| What you described is a completely different idea.
| wiether wrote:
| > If you are a programmer, it's unusable.
|
| Those kind of cloud storage services were never intended for
| code. One has to be crazy to put workspaces in a Xcloud
| directory.
|
| Git is here for this purpose. And if you want a central repo you
| use GitHub, GitLab or a self-hosted platform.
|
| IIRC some alternatives to Xcloud are even based on Git.
|
| One day a colleague was complaining that OneDrive was taking lots
| of CPU and showing lots of errors. This guy had checkouted a
| project in their OneDrive directory with the .git and
| node_modules...
| dmix wrote:
| > Syncthing has reminded me how great computers can be if they
| are not made by corporations.
|
| This is a silly conclusion.
|
| The actual problem he has zeroed in on js when marketers are the
| primary influencers in product design. Every company I've worked
| for while leading UX and who had a marketing/MBA are product
| manager had made me do useless things like add the "share this on
| Facebook and Twitter" links that no one has ever click on.
|
| I've also worked at companies that are run and put engineers
| first and the experience was products the total opposite of what
| the OP experienced.
|
| Believe it or not corporations can be run by tech people. They
| are just organizations. They are what you you make of them. The
| only difference is OSS products tend to be run and designed by
| tech guys, not marketing people.
|
| The other major problem is marketers in tech companies mostly
| suck at their jobs. I'm not being elitist, who knows software
| better that the nerds who obsessively spent their youth learning
| how they work.
| globular-toast wrote:
| Do you have any examples or corporations that haven't succumbed
| to regular corporate bullshit after several decades?
| 6510 wrote:
| > Believe it or not corporations can be run by tech people.
|
| This can change at any time.
| causi wrote:
| Does Syncthing allow you to sync two differently-named folders as
| one folder while preserving the respective names? For example,
| your pictures folder may not be called the same thing on your
| phone and computer, or across Windows and Linux, or you want to
| sync game save files between Android and Windows.
| rexfuzzle wrote:
| Yes, it does. I do this for multiple folder- i.e. the pictures
| folder on my phone is called whatever android has decided to
| call it this year and it syncs with my pictures folder on my
| desktop.
| stavros wrote:
| Yes, it doesn't care where each folder is on the FS or what
| it's called.
| southerntofu wrote:
| I'm not sure it's supported in a GUI, but a simple symlink
| should do the trick. Say your photos folder is called Pictures
| on one machine, and Photos one another: just ln -s Pictures
| Photos (admitting you've moved all the contents of photos to
| Pictures and removed the Photos folder itself) and that should
| just work (didn't test).
| XorNot wrote:
| You don't need to do this: when the folder is offered to
| share to another device, you can specify which folder it's
| going to go into locally. Internally everything is matched by
| folder ID codes.
| [deleted]
| foxhop wrote:
| mogoh wrote:
| I tried many sync solutions (Syncthing, SparkleShare, Resilio,
| Mega, Seafile, NextCloud) and I almost always experienced some
| kind of data corruption. Syncthing was no exception. I could not
| reproduce the problem, so I never made a bug report.
|
| The corruption was something like this:
|
| - I recursively renamed all files from a folder from uppercase to
| lower case. Suddenly I duplicated files, uppercase and lower
| case.
|
| - I did not use a device for a long time (a year or so). After
| switching the old device on, it "recovers" deleted files.
|
| - I put a git repository into a sync folder. It stopped working
| after a while.
|
| This, however, could be a solved problem by now, as it is 2+
| years ago, that I tried syncthing.
|
| Am I the only one with that kind of Problems? Has the situation
| improved?
| jbellis wrote:
| I've been using resilio sync for years without corruption. If
| you're seeing corruption across half a dozen different systems,
| I wonder if you might have a hardware problem.
| nijave wrote:
| I tried Syncthing many years ago and had similar issues. I was
| going to try it again a few months ago but memory usage and
| initial scam speed weren't good.
|
| Resilio worked pretty well for me for years but now gets stuck
| with a weird SQLite error
| vHMtsdf wrote:
| I really wanted to love syncthing a lot, I loved the idea, the
| interface, everything. But I would always get a number of
| errors on some files for whatever reason that I would have to
| then manually fix and sometimes I couldn't even do that. But it
| has been a few years, so maybe it's time to try again...
| pacifika wrote:
| It's not recommended to sync a git repo
| mogoh wrote:
| I have heard that before, but no good reason why.
|
| If a synchronization software can't handle a git repository,
| what else is it not able to handle? After all, a git
| repository is just a bunch of files and in my case not
| particular big once.
| ratorx wrote:
| It's a consistency problem. Syncthing provides reasonably
| solid single file consistency. Git repos and anything else
| that requires multi-file consistency is trickier, since
| Syncthing doesn't know about the internal consistency
| requirements.
|
| If you use Syncthing peer-to-peer and/or have concurrent
| modifications to different peers before a full sync, you
| can run into problems. It's not really designed for that,
| it's optimised from the single user sharing individual
| files on multiple devices case.
|
| Doing anything better here is incredibly hard in a peer-to-
| peer system on the level of abstraction that Syncthing
| operates on.
|
| I think renames might be/may have been problematic because
| it tries to be smart and handle them efficiently. If it did
| the naive thing of delete followed by creation, consistency
| would be better, but performance would be worse.
| rbanffy wrote:
| From the title I imagined the time I used an Apple II... Part of
| the nostalgia is, of course, because I was much younger.
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| I disagree about the Dropbox folder criticism. It's actually
| simplifies things a lot: whatever you put there is synced. Very
| straightforward. You won't break anything.
|
| Syncthing, on the other hand, is far too geeky and easy to ruin
| things if you somehow sync a rapidly updated folder. I've moved a
| few people to Syncthing and in the end they all were not very
| happy with it for one reason or another. It also isn't as clear
| on the sync state of a file.
| southerntofu wrote:
| > ruin things if you somehow sync a rapidly updated folder
| (...) It also isn't as clear on the sync state of a file.
|
| Do you have a link/resource elaborating on these questions?
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| Just from experience. The person was syncing a folder with a
| minecraft world, and of course ruined it by running 2
| instances simultaneously.
| southerntofu wrote:
| So the caveat is that concurrently writing to the same file
| on separate machines will lead to data corruption? Is that
| reproducible with other files than Minecraft saves, or can
| it be that Minecraft introduces corruption by amending the
| on-disk file with a delta of currently-running changes not
| accounting for the possibility that the file has been
| altered?
| iveqy wrote:
| It's a common problem with git as well. Running git in a
| dropbox folder is discouraged.
| Macha wrote:
| The same could happen with Dropbox/icloud, or even if you
| just ran two Minecraft instances with the same copy of the
| world on one machine - Minecraft worlds are not designed
| for concurrent modification by multiple processes
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| The same can't happen with Dropbox, because minecraft
| worlds are NOT stored in ~/Dropbox/ folder. That actually
| reinforces my point about a separate synced folder being
| a plus for most users, not a minus.
| Macha wrote:
| Third party launchers commonly used for modpacks, the
| first party dedicated server, changing the settings on
| the first party launcher are all ways you can put your
| saves in the Dropbox folder
| Breazy wrote:
| > _minecraft worlds are NOT stored in ~ /Dropbox/
| folder._
|
| They certainly can be. They can be stored wherever you
| like, either if you are using a modding/hacking launcher
| (both are very popular for non-technical players, e.g.
| kids who aren't programmers) or if you are running a
| minecraft server (the vanilla server jar runs wherever
| you decide to put it, and doing this is not exactly an
| esoteric feat; again, nontechnical kids do it.)
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| Of course they can. However, person who knows simlink-fu
| and other tricks is unlikely to find himself in a
| situation when his data is corrupted by an incorrect
| Dropbox sync process. Syncthing's user, however, can
| screw himself with just a few mouse clicks, _and I
| personally saw that happen_.
|
| So I myself simply sync just one folder with Syncthing,
| Dropbox style.
| NavinF wrote:
| Wouldn't that happen with Dropbox too? Maybe the race
| condition just happens less often because it syncs slower?
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| No, because you'll have to do quite a few steps to put an
| actively used minecraft world in a ~/Dropbox/ folder.
| danparsonson wrote:
| That doesn't argue that Dropbox won't also ruin actively
| updated folders. You're now talking about Minecraft
| configuration which is orthogonal to your original point.
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| I've never seen people put Minecraft saves to anything
| other than the default location for their system.
| [deleted]
| runjake wrote:
| I'll preface this by saying I switched from Dropbox to Syncthing
| a long time ago and I love Syncthing.
|
| I also love Nik Tonsky's writing but he's serious misrepresenting
| the ease of Syncthing in this post. He initially describes it as:
| You download a single binary executable. You run it. There's no
| step three. No, seriously. It's so simple I thought
| I missed something. But no. After you run that binary, you have a
| fully operational node of Syncthing. It's ready to sync with any
| other Syncthing node, no other setup necessary.
|
| He then goes on to describe the definitely horrendous process of
| getting Dropbox going with the official client[1].
|
| BUT, then he goes on and explains the complex setup involved with
| Syncthing, which if it were explained screen by screen, like he
| did with Dropbox, would look even more tedious and complex.
|
| You're not going to switch to Syncthing because it's so much
| easier.
|
| 1. Maestral: For those who use macOS or Linux and want to stick
| with Dropbox for some reason, give Maestral a try. It's a free,
| open source app that does what Dropbox originally did: sync a
| folder.
|
| https://maestral.app/
| 999900000999 wrote:
| I don't get the point of this.
|
| When I drop all my files in my OneDrive folder, there's no
| confusion on what I'm getting. I'm getting a fully managed backup
| solution.
|
| I'm not getting complete control, or the ability to do strange
| superuser stuff. I have no interest in managing my own backup
| servers, I have no interest in installing my own sync up tools, I
| want a multi-billion dollar company to run it.
|
| There's no way to get around it, either. Even if you want to roll
| your own, you're still ultimately using AWS or another cloud
| provider.
|
| I make music, and being able to make a song on my iPad, drop it
| in one drive folder is amazing. Even better, since I make a ton
| of sampled music, I can find cool samples and use them on my iPad
| within seconds.
|
| If you have any awareness of how difficult loading new samples is
| on an MPC you'll respect how great this is.
|
| This is like arguing your Ford Fiesta can't go off-road.
| globular-toast wrote:
| It sounds like you never loved computers how the author used to
| love them.
| rTX5CMRXIfFG wrote:
| > There's no way to get around it, either. Even if you want to
| roll your own, you're still ultimately using AWS or another
| cloud provider.
|
| You don't seem to have read the article. It expressly states
| there that Syncthing uses disk storage.
|
| And you're strangely proud about not getting this whole thing
| and wanting a multi-billion dollar company to do it all for
| you, but you'd be first to cry _muh freedome muh human rights_
| when the company's TOCs change and you start getting censored
| and you lose ownership of your own files, which already happens
| today.
| 999900000999 wrote:
| I did read the article, presumably most people would sink
| their files to some cloud provider like AWS. You might have
| an EC2 instance which periodically syncs with your local
| files.
|
| https://aws.amazon.com/marketplace/pp/prodview-insise5hc6mm2
|
| It's just what it is, so let's say AWS suspends your account,
| for some mysterious reason. You'll lose access to your EC2
| instances
| 1MachineElf wrote:
| I don't know anyone who uses Synching with any type of
| cloud-based instance, so I'm not sure this is a real issue
| for Syncthing users. It's all P2P file synchronization
| between their own devices.
| 999900000999 wrote:
| Then why does the author even compare the two?
|
| I can do this with time machine, or by just copying to a
| network drive.
| choward wrote:
| I believe the other was comparing the feature of being
| able to sync between devices. In the case of Dropbox one
| of those devices happens to be a third party server ran
| by a multi billion dollar company. The author doesn't
| seem to care about that device.
|
| But if the author did want a third party server storing
| data they could choose any cloud provider on the planet
| and run syncthing. You could also do the same thing with
| Dropbox however one of those third party servers will
| always be the actual Dropbox server. But if they decide
| they don't like you anymore and block you from that
| server nothing else will work anymore.
|
| So in summary syncthing gives you the same thing with
| more control so you aren't at the mercy of one money
| hungry corporation.
| 999900000999 wrote:
| Right, but this ignores the entire purpose of Dropbox for
| most people.
|
| There's an Indian proverb which says something along the
| lines of don't judge an elephant for being unable to
| climb trees. I think it applies here
| rTX5CMRXIfFG wrote:
| Because the purpose of the comparison is to show how
| spammy the mainstream products have become.
| khaledh wrote:
| That's how Mullvad VPN works (more or less). Click "Generate
| account" and you get a unique 16-digit account number; download
| the app and put in the account number and you're good to go. No
| email, no username, no password, etc. Only payment info when you
| need to pay.
| godot wrote:
| > No, seriously. It's so simple I thought I missed something. But
| no. After you run that binary, you have a fully operational node
| of Syncthing. It's ready to sync with any other Syncthing node,
| no other setup necessary. There's no installers, no package
| management (but there are packages if you want to), no
| registration, no email, no logins, no password creation, no 2FA,
| no consents, no user agreements.
|
| The most similar experience I had to this in recent years was
| using a program called wormhole for peer to peer file transfer:
| https://github.com/Jacalz/wormhole-gui
|
| It was refreshing in a similar way; I download and open up the
| program, a friend does the same, and we can send files to each
| other, with a code genereated from the program. None of all this
| accounts stuff.
|
| (For what it's worth, file sending has a similar issue as
| backup/sync that the author described -- most modern services are
| some centralized/cloud form, as opposed to the old days of
| ICQ/AIM/etc. where you could actually establish a direct
| connection to a friend and send files.)
| ur-whale wrote:
| > There's no installers, no package management (but there are
| packages if you want to), no registration, no email, no logins,
| no password creation, no 2FA, no consents, no user agreements.
|
| I believe this sentence summarizes why computing has gotten truly
| annoying in the last 20 years.
|
| My most recent bout of frustration: - bought
| an M1 mac mini to play with new apple chips - tried to
| install wireguard on it - the only sane way to do this
| is to install from the Apple store - not happy, but I
| tried to create an account on the Apple store without them
| knowing what size underwear I need - then they asked for
| my credit card
|
| So in summary: you need a credit card to run wireguard on an
| effing mac.
|
| I'd be happy to be proven wrong and know if there was a way to
| install OSS software on a bloody cupertino box without giving
| them the key to the kingdom, but even if that exists, the point
| still stands: the level of annoying and invasiveness of modern
| computing is simply astounding.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| OneDrive is pretty good and underrated IMO
| random_upvoter wrote:
| I agree it's ok. One time it really bit me in the ass by
| silently deciding that some random old backup folder of my
| Desktop, residing on my Onedrive, should actually be my desktop
| folder and all of a sudden all this old crap appeared on my
| desktop. No fun was had undoing that. Even now my computer
| seems to be in some murky situation where my desktop is partly
| local and partly on my Onedrive, not cool, I haven't really
| looked into it and I really have no time for this.
| prmoustache wrote:
| Not really multiplatform though. Opensource clients exists but
| they could break anytime from some MS changes.
| southerntofu wrote:
| And suffers from the same underlying problem as Dropbox and
| iCloud: it's profit-driven proprietary software. Are you sure
| your interests as a user are aligned with that of Microsoft as
| a company? Are you confident that will not change over time?
| adwn wrote:
| Are you sure your interests as a user are aligned with that
| of Syncthing's open source developers? Are you confident that
| will not change over time?
| southerntofu wrote:
| I'm confident they are at the moment. And i'm even more
| confident that if that ever changes, i'll find many people
| in a HN/Github thread whose interest are very much aligned
| with mine to fork the project and keep it going in a
| direction that suits us. Something you won't ever be able
| to do with a proprietary piece of software, unless of
| course you're willing to spend thousands of hours reverse-
| engineering a protocol they're going to change as soon as
| you achieve interop.
| dt2m wrote:
| Agreed. The recent Google Drive update which completely broke
| file metadata on Mac OS, along with it often times mounting
| twice, requiring a reboot to fix it, prompted me to test out
| all the different cloud storage solutions.
|
| As stated in the OP Dropbox has become far too bloated, and
| just feels wrong. iCloud Drive only works 90% of the time, and
| doesn't play nice with apps that use absolute paths (even many
| Cocoa MacOS apps, which do this under the hood).
|
| OneDrive is the only client that gets out of my way, just
| works, and even can automatically move unused files to the
| cloud without them disappearing from the filesystem entirely.
| It's crazy to think that Microsoft are making better Mac OS
| software than Apple.
|
| I haven't considered going the self-hosted route yet, but
| Syncthing looks promising if you don't need folder sharing or
| robust iOS support.
| datavirtue wrote:
| Agreed. I use it as part of my personal Office 365 Enterprise
| account and it has been fairly annoyance free compared to
| Dropbox/iCloud.
|
| I really only treat these cloud storage services as a sync and
| as an additional convenience backup. I don't ever think of them
| as primary storage.
|
| Box is another popular one, which has SSO and other options to
| allow it's use in more restricted environments. It's at about
| the same annoyance level as OneDeive.
|
| This guy mentions Drop Box being good in 2012...that's when I
| stopped using it due to the various bloat and annoyances.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| The performance of the Mac client is terrible. Simply clicking
| the menu bar icon sometimes takes several seconds to bring up a
| terrible looking menu that smells like Electron.
| dt2m wrote:
| I wouldn't necessarily call it terrible, as all the big 3
| cloud storage services just wrap Web UIs in a window instead
| of doing a fully native app. The file syncing functionality
| works just fine for me every time, compared to iCloud, which
| regularly will stop syncing silently, despite it being better
| integrated into the Finder.
|
| I'd rather have reliable syncing with an Electron wrapper
| than a fully native UI with broken sync.
| BeetleB wrote:
| What's his deal with spaces? Yes, I know some crappy _tools_ can
| 't handle them, but he seems to indict all of Python and Ruby.
| josteink wrote:
| The deal with spaces?
|
| I would say Linux-developers and script-wranglers targeting
| others of the same kin, being allowed to exist within their own
| bubble, never being exposed to a real/"normal" user.
|
| And I say that as a Linux-user, script-wrangler and developer.
| In 2022 this still being a thing at all is quite embarrassing.
| fuzzy2 wrote:
| The part comparing the installation is a little disingenuous
| IMHO. You cannot seriously be complaining about Gatekeeper if
| you're using a Mac. Dropbox has a web interface so it needs an
| account. 2FA enhances account security. Installing Homebrew also
| used _sudo_. In fact, you had to install it first. If you didn't,
| you also wouldn't have the Homebrew-services helper. And what's
| wrong with an OOBE wizard? It's software for everyone.
|
| I haven't used Dropbox in years (because it sucks now and I use
| ZFS), but this is not a fair comparison.
|
| Syncthing is great. However, in comparison with Dropbox, if I
| look past the differences in what it does, I find that it's just
| not suitable for most users. Remember that most users are barely
| able to operate their internet browser. Even seasoned users may
| have trouble setting it up on, say, Windows.
| ubermonkey wrote:
| Why does zfs put you off Dropbox?
| Macha wrote:
| There was a period where Dropbox announced they dropping
| support for everything except straight ext4 on linux, though
| they eventually rolled back on that
| mgoetzke wrote:
| I think everything you say is true and understandable. But all
| these 'good practices' add up to a convulted experience.
|
| I recently tried moving my family over to a password manager.
| Something that can be understood and managed by my SO even if I
| should die etc. Something also usable for my 12 yo kid.
|
| Not as simple as it sounds. Across iPad/Pixel Phone/Edge
| Browser/Surface Book for my kid for example.
| newnamenewface wrote:
| I had a similar experience trying to set up my family on a
| password manager. Something relatively simple to tech-
| inclined folks is like pulling teeth for the average person.
| For me, fortunately much of my family has some tech savvy but
| even still I'm 1/4 due to being across the country from most
| of them.
| smaudet wrote:
| I don't think its disigenuous, though. I think these 'best
| practices' are really just the software equivalent of legalese
| speak.
|
| If you had to run an install wizard, use a key, and upload a
| photograph of yourself everytime you wanted to, say, put orange
| juice in the fridge, your average user would scream bloody
| murder and rightly call your product bloody garbage.
|
| What you _might_ see is a caretaker sign documents for a
| terminally disabled patient who need assisted living services
| and then put orange juice in the fridge...which is where the
| mistake comes from.
|
| This is the software equivalent of getting a lawyer and a
| caretaker involved every damn time you put orange juice in the
| fridge - because it works for the disabled few corporations
| mistake 'accesibilty' for good design... And then you realize
| this is 'standard practice' and finally understand how
| abhorrently terrible pretty much every damn website, app, and
| program on the planet is...
|
| Dropbox is absolute garbage. So is Apple. They need to remove
| 95 percent of their garbage for the average user - the option
| to use the assisted living features should be available but
| _not_ turned on by default.
| [deleted]
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| While the article is a bit over the top it does raise a valid
| point of companies desperate to add more value, essentially
| destroying the value proposition for their most loyal users over
| time by actually creating negative value in the form of features
| that no longer work, annoying features, redundant features that
| distract, etc. That definitely happened to Dropbox, Evernote,
| Flickr, and quite a few other former "unicorns".
|
| I have no use for Dropbox at this point in my life. Once upon a
| time I used it and I even considered paying for it (but didn't).
| But at this point it's a commodity that does not solve a problem
| I have and is not worth anything to me because I have better
| alternatives that are also freemium. If I want to share files, I
| have multiple zero cost options that will work without too much
| hassle.
|
| My theory of software is that over time any good feature either
| becomes a commodity thing that adds negative value if you do it
| poorly (or fail to do it entirely) but does not add value if you
| do it well; or a niche thing that costs money that nobody cares
| about enough to do well for free. Usually the cheapest way to do
| those features well is through open source. You have to in order
| not to differentiate negatively. OSS is this pacman thing that
| gobbles up all good things in software and converges on a best
| possible implementation for those things and provides it for 0$.
| You can pay to make it go faster, for support, for convenience,
| etc. But the basic feature is there forever in the form of good
| old, free speech, OSS. And if you don't like it, you can grab the
| code and fix it. All good software is doomed to become a
| commodity.
|
| The vast majority of things people care about ultimately end up
| being grabbed by one or more OSS projects and replicated. The UX
| isn't always great. But you can get the thing for 0$ and it will
| work and it will have a commodity of people nurturing and caring
| about it. If you are smart, you can build an entire company
| without ever buying any software. And many multi billion $
| companies exist purely to act as a convenient facade for open
| source. Convenience is worth money. Features are not.
|
| So-called unicorn companies are not based on value creation but
| on using investor money to "get there first" before the window to
| do so runs out. Timing is everything. So, you get rushed, easy to
| copy products. As soon as the investment happens, a dozen
| competitors get funded as well and typically ship competing
| products within months. After that the OSS pacman catches up if
| the thing is at all relevant. The problem (for investors) with
| that is that the window inevitably runs out and it is short.
| Also, most of these companies are one trick ponies that never had
| any IP worth protecting long term. So, the value payoff needs to
| be huge or there needs to be some kind of moat that stretches the
| window.
|
| Basically, Dropbox is similar to rsync with a UI and a not even a
| particularly fancy/good implementation. So, as soon as there was
| a hint of success, people copied their rather trivial feature set
| and from then on it was a race to the bottom in terms of pricing.
| The ultimate of which is of course 0$. Such is the fate of all
| good ideas in software: they get copied.
|
| Dropbox built a commodity and the obvious things happened.
| Copying files over a network was a solved problem long before
| Dropbox existed. All they did was show how it could be done more
| conveniently. Now numerous things exist that provide a similar
| level of convenience. End of story (for drop box). They might
| limp along for another few years but it won't matter. At this
| point, who even cares?
| tibbydudeza wrote:
| Onedrive and a NAS and not having multiple computers around.
| kache_ wrote:
| I still use computers as I used to love them.
|
| I don't use garbage bloatware that constantly nags. If I have to,
| I imprison it into the confines of a browser sandbox.
| dblbaguette wrote:
| I have been using Syncthing for some time and it has been
| excellent. The only downside is it actively tries to establish
| P2P connection when I have a central server with a public IP.
| Other than that it's great.
| jwr wrote:
| I've been using Syncthing for about a year now, with multiple
| computers, and it's fantastic.
|
| Dropbox has become a real pain over the years (I've also been a
| paid Dropbox customer for a long time):
|
| * adding bloat and features that I don't want or need
|
| * constantly nagging me for upgrades
|
| * lying that the admin password is required (it isn't)
|
| * consuming large amounts of CPU when anything changes _anywhere_
| in the filesystem
|
| If Dropbox had a subscription plan where I could pay to get just
| the basic file sync functionality, with no nagging, no prompting,
| and optimized CPU usage, I would be happy to hand over my money.
| But it seems the company is run by the marketing team now.
|
| I highly recommend syncthing as a very, very capable replacement.
| JohnJamesRambo wrote:
| https://craft.co/dropbox/funding-rounds
| deepsun wrote:
| > * lying that the admin password is required (it isn't)
|
| I love it, and turned on in Signal as well. Otherwise I'll
| forget it eventually.
| grimgrin wrote:
| Can you summarize what they maybe introduced/fixed to quell
| your old review?
|
| > over the last week, syncthing has corrupted my git repository
| twice. I reported this as an issue, but the issue was
| immediately closed with an explanation I disagree with.
|
| > I no longer trust syncthing until this gets resolved,
| unfortunately.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23660438
|
| --
|
| I would absolutely be syncing directories containing git repos,
| for better or worse
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| I trust syncthing for singular/regular files but trusting
| something as complicated and interconnected as a git repo on
| it seems like a bad idea, especially if it's possible for two
| syncthing computers to act on the same git repo... I never
| really thought about trying it.
| JackMcMack wrote:
| I sync a folder containing multiple git repos, never had a
| corruption happen.
|
| @jwr can you link the issue you reported?
|
| The only major issue I had was performance on
| TrueNAS/FreeBSD, Syncthing tends to keep a lot of files open.
| Increasing maxfiles/maxvnodes fixed it. [0]
|
| On a sidenote, what's the point of these limits if your
| entire system becomes unusable if you reach them?
|
| [0] https://jira.ixsystems.com/browse/NAS-104534
| WesolyKubeczek wrote:
| I had the exact same thing, granted, it was ten years ago
| already, with dropbox. Something something file versioning,
| ending up with neighboring files of conflicting revisions,
| the disease spreading over to all instances.
|
| My takeaway was ,,never keep git repos in a system that does
| its own distributed versioning". I just do git push around so
| my remotes are up to date. Git _is_ sort of dropbox with a
| manual gearbox, after all (and more, but that's not the
| point).
|
| I'm really unsure that this is a kind of easily solvable
| problem for either dropbox or syncthing. Unless your syncing
| product gets smart enough to understand what a git repository
| is and how some files have to be checked in in lockstep, that
| is. Otherwise, expect race conditions.
| banana_giraffe wrote:
| So, if you really want to use dropbox for syncing git
| repos, this plugin solves the problem well:
|
| https://github.com/anishathalye/git-remote-dropbox
|
| For me, it solved all of the corruption problems with using
| Dropbox for git storage. In the end, I decided it was too
| heavy weight, and wanted to be able to clone my repo on
| machines that might not have anything other than "git"
| installed, but until I reached that point, I was a happy
| user of it.
|
| I'm not aware of a similar tool for syncthing.
| chias wrote:
| Doing a quick search of reported issues around git repos,
| basically the trouble is that a git repo folder does not
| expect to be sync'ed at a file level, because repos are
| expected to be in different states on different devices, and
| the state of a repo is represented in the filesystem via the
| .git directory.
|
| As an example problem-case, say your first device checks out
| branch A and your second device checks out branch B. Some
| files conflict, which is likely reasonably handled as any
| filesync application needs to handle conflicting updates. But
| any files that are changed in one and not in the other end up
| getting sync'ed over into the other, _including_ inside your
| GIT directory, which will very likely lead to an illegal GIT
| directory state.
|
| As a toy example, pretend that the .git internals require
| that at any given time, `.git/activebranch/` must contain
| exactly one file whose filename is the name of the active
| branch, and git maintains this invariant. By syncing changed
| files, any filesync utility would break this invariant by
| resulting in `.git/activebranch/` containing two files, due
| to each side seeing a new file that the other side needs to
| acquire. Depending on how such a problem might manifest in
| real life as a result of performing a file-based sync on two
| instances of a git directory, this could lead to your .git
| directory entering a state in which git doesn't know how to
| interpret it.
|
| --
|
| This isn't a syncthing problem as such, it's a problem of
| trying to use a file syncing application on the internal
| state of an application on two different machines with two
| different states, and expecting the result to be a valid
| state.
| throw10920 wrote:
| > it's a problem of trying to use a file syncing
| application on the internal state of an application on two
| different machines with two different states, and expecting
| the result to be a valid state.
|
| I think that we can narrow the problem down to the fact
| that git's internal state is represented in a way that is
| transparent to syncthing (a folder of files), that it will
| attempt to sync, but only partially succeed. If git's
| internal state was a single database file, you wouldn't get
| corruption, just a syncthing conflict file.
| dpedu wrote:
| FWIW I sync my ~/code directory, which I work on quite
| regularly, between a few macs and linux machines using
| syncthing. I've never faced corruption and I've been using
| this setup for 2 or 3 years now. The directory holds about
| 150 git repos / 50GB / 500k files/folders.
| deergomoo wrote:
| > consuming large amounts of CPU when anything changes anywhere
| in the filesystem
|
| I don't understand how this still hasn't been addressed. On
| macOS at least (not sure about other platforms), rather than
| subscribing to filesystem events for the synced folders, it
| subscribes to FS events for _literally everything_ and checks
| to see if each is relevant to the folders it should sync.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Also: Questionable request for Accessibility permission. I was
| surprised to see Dropbox is still asking for this. I thought
| Apple put the hammer down on this behavior from apps long ago.
| You're supposed to only request Accessibility if it is for the
| purpose of supporting assistive technologies like VoiceOver, to
| help people with disabilities. Accessibility permissions have
| become something of a golden ticket or carte blanche for apps,
| allowing them to do just about anything on the operating
| system. Dropbox's dialog is vague about the purpose ("To get
| the most out of Dropbox") for requesting this superpower, so
| one can only assume that they are not doing it specifically to
| support assistive technologies like VoiceOver.
| salamandersauce wrote:
| I loved Dropbox. If they had a reasonably priced plan with like
| 50GB I would have subscribed in a heartbeat but they claimed it
| was impossible to do so all they offer now is like 2TB for $20
| CAD a month which is far more than I need or want to pay. Then
| they neutered the free plan to 3 devices and I've mostly
| stopped using it.
| arepublicadoceu wrote:
| The truth is: you're not the customer that Dropbox wants.
|
| Not offering reasonable storage for a reasonable price is a
| way to keep users that they don't want away from their
| service.
|
| Just like 1Password. They are extremely non subtle in pushing
| users that want local vault away from their customer base.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| I didn't know 1pass had changed. Glad I ditched them for
| Bitwarden a few years back. However I think bitwarden makes
| their backend complicated enough to scare off casual users
| of it like me who thought about hosting their own backend
| :) .
| nyolfen wrote:
| https://github.com/dani-garcia/vaultwarden
| gigatexal wrote:
| I agree that this is amazing -- the only thing is I trust and
| embrace lock-in with icloud because I can't be bothered to be a
| storage systems admin.
|
| Could it be configured to sync to blob storage on s3 since ingest
| is free?
| southerntofu wrote:
| I can't exactly recommend to use Amazon services, but if you're
| doing it anyway something like s3fs-fuse [0] should do the
| trick so that S3 appears as a standard filesystem to syncthing.
|
| [0] https://github.com/s3fs-fuse/s3fs-fuse
| ossusermivami wrote:
| I just keep _all_ my text files in a git repository and use
| custom elisp on top of magit to quickly commit all of them, I
| have a custom go syncronizer that would symlinks the text files
| around my filesystems and makes sure all my system is sane.
|
| for the binaries stuff, I would use maybe sometime syncthing but
| that's more a backup thing, i don't usually need all of them
| available on all my laptops/ws
|
| for real backup i just incrementally dump my btrfs snapshot to a
| remote USB disk every hour.
|
| works well for me so far,
| smm11 wrote:
| I've been messing around with a G4 Mac recently. I've got it
| dual-booting OS 8.6, and the OS-X Public Beta, with all the
| software on both sides that I had back in the day, and always
| wanted. It gets online with a crossover cable connected to the
| nearby Win11 machine, but that's scary and very limited.
|
| Still, it's fun to roll along now and then like we did when we
| didn't know what was coming.
| leokennis wrote:
| This website has a great design and an absolutely hilarious "dark
| mode" toggle.
| NKosmatos wrote:
| Nice one! Pretty hilarious but a little bit unusable on iPad.
| xutopia wrote:
| Thanks for mentioning it! Had me laughing out loud!
| globular-toast wrote:
| Haha, thanks for the tip. I use dark reader so rarely bother
| with a site's own dark mode toggle.
| zepearl wrote:
| Hahaha, I didn't notice that, thanks
| werds wrote:
| I just wanted to say that this personal blog design and format is
| beautiful
| arnorhs wrote:
| To play the devil's advocate the main things I like about dropbox
| that syncthing doesn't help with is:
|
| - being able to store way more data in the cloud than my computer
| can fit
|
| - Seamlessly being able to browse all the files and seamlessly
| opening them even if they are not stored on my computer
|
| - Being able to save a bunch of files. Turn off my computer, open
| those files on another computer later without even thinking about
| it.
|
| - Having a really nice mobile experience for backing up my photos
| and browsing all my files, if I need to.
|
| - Knowing that if all my computers get destroyed by a volcano all
| my files are still available if I decide to then buy a new
| computer.
|
| - Being able to share individual files with people
|
| There's honestly probably more that I'm forgetting.
| Majestic121 wrote:
| Some of them are done by Syncthing, if you have a remote server
| : I've been using Syncthing to keep my keepass db synced
| between computer and phone, and I don't have to think about it.
| Same for the computer destruction scenario.
|
| It does require to setup a server, I agree with you. I wonder
| if a Syncthing as a service would work?
| wooptoo wrote:
| This is why I love open-source and put up with oddities in Linux
| / BSD / CLI tools / whatever. They're liberating to use. They
| don't try to sell you stuff. You're in control & it does what it
| says on the tin.
| jodrellblank wrote:
| Wait wait, syyncthing joins you into a cloud and sends your data
| to/through random people?
|
| Why would anyone trust that, over paying Apple or DropBox to send
| your data only to Amazon S3? How long before "oops, for years
| anyone who joins the Syncthing mesh has been able to request your
| data and nobody noticed until now"?
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| No? Syncthing syncs your data to other instances of syncthing
| that you authorize, in a p2p mesh.
| jodrellblank wrote:
| It joins you into a thing which connects all users of
| SyncThing. I said "cloud", you said "p2p mesh" the blog said
| "a fully operational node of Syncthing". No real difference
| there.
|
| From the syncthing website " _Private. None of your data is
| ever stored anywhere else other than on your computers_ ".
| From their open protocol page " _Relay is a service which
| relays data between two devices which are not able to connect
| to each other directly otherwise._ " How can they claim "None
| of your data is ever stored anywhere else" if any relay node
| could save your data as it's transferred through them?
|
| Fine it's " _Encrypted. All communication is secured using
| TLS_ ". But we know that TLS encryption can be flawed (see
| deprecation of TLS1.3), and we know it can be implemented
| poorly (see OpenSSL vulnerabilities) and we know metadata and
| protocol analysis is a thing (analysing how much syncs
| to/from each node, how often, etc).
|
| What does " _Authenticated. Every device is identified by a
| strong cryptographic certificate._ " mean if you don't have
| to setup a certificate authority or buy a verified SSL
| certificate or use LetsEncrypt or generate a public/private
| keypair? Would you recognise your SyncThing certificate if
| you saw it?
|
| How well do you know the SyncThing protocol? Do you know
| someone in a far away country cannot find a flaw in the
| implementation which allows them to sync to your device, or
| insert themselves as a relay node?
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| The relays are only used if your devices can't see each
| other directly; over a LAN, and in many WAN cases, it won't
| even be used, and if you really care you can just disable
| it. And bluntly, if someone had a TLS break that could work
| after the fact on recorded data, syncthing is the least of
| our worries.
|
| > (see deprecation of TLS1.3)
|
| The what now?
|
| > What does "Authenticated. Every device is identified by a
| strong cryptographic certificate." mean if you don't have
| to setup a certificate authority or buy a verified SSL
| certificate or use LetsEncrypt or generate a public/private
| keypair? Would you recognise your SyncThing certificate if
| you saw it?
|
| It _is_ a public /private keypair, and if you're doing the
| initial setup over an untrusted network, yes you should
| copy-paste the fingerprint and email it to yourself or
| whatever.
|
| > How well do you know the SyncThing protocol? Do you know
| someone in a far away country cannot find a flaw in the
| implementation which allows them to sync to your device, or
| insert themselves as a relay node?
|
| How well do you know the dropbox/icloud/gdrive/whatever
| protocol? Do you know that somewhat in a far away country
| cannot find a flaw in the implementation which allows them
| to sync to your device, or insert themselves as a relay
| node? Also, inserting themselves as a relay would not be a
| security break, since "Anyone can run a relay server, and
| it will automatically join the relay pool and be available
| to Syncthing users. The current list of relays can be found
| at https://relays.syncthing.net/."
| (https://docs.syncthing.net/users/strelaysrv.html)
| obligate_self wrote:
| I also absolutely love Syncthing. I have been using it to keep my
| keepass database synced between devices for a few years now, and
| have had zero issues.
| mahirsaid wrote:
| if that isn't enough now I'm dealing with OneDrive sucking the
| life out of me to try and get it to comply. its full everyday and
| i end up cleaning it up only to be full right after i clean i. if
| thats not enough forget about using it on iPhone its a disaster
| like seriously. oh apple broke 3 trillion market cap WOW thats
| great one company ruling with utter garbage ecosystem of
| products. people are raving about how the new iPhone finally ahs
| 12hrz screen ( a two year old features for most high end phones)
| maybe some people will wake up some day. i learned something when
| i used to be a cook " presentation is everything" its so true
| their products do look good but they are not innovators sorry to
| say.
| [deleted]
| Lemonaid wrote:
| Dropbox target a much larger and less technical audience than
| Syncthing does, hence why Dropbox has UI/workflows that some
| technical users abhor.
|
| I've lost patience with such products, and instead I tradeoff
| fewer features for more control. This applies to hardware too.
| pradn wrote:
| I'm glad options like this exist. I worry about timely security
| updates and the hassle of setting up the sync solution. The worst
| middle-ground is being a free user of Dropbox. If you're a paid
| customer, you get less naggy upsells at least.
| greenie_beans wrote:
| yes! i downloaded this recently and it brought me joy. thanks for
| articulating it it
| toss1 wrote:
| Yup, this overall experience of straightforward contained
| executables vs the entire mess we have now is vastly better.
|
| Also a big fan of Syncthing, and have now found something better:
| Bvckup 2. It has the same download -run experience, more
| controllable options, and runs a LOT faster by design. No
| commercial connection other than being a satisfied customer.
| choward wrote:
| Just looked up Bvckup 2 and it's completely different. First of
| all, it's windows only which is a deal breaker for me. It also
| doesn't appear to be open source.
|
| There is also a pricing scheme so you have to constantly have
| to check to see what features you have. The cheapest $30
| version doesn't even come with a background service. That's
| only in the Pro version. And it's the same with the command
| line tool. I also find it weird that they market it as a backup
| tool when clearly it's just for syncing.
|
| This product seems to be pretty much exactly what the author
| was complaining about.
| toss1 wrote:
| Hmmm, seemed like the author was looking more at [the
| labyrinthine signup and setup for cloud services] vs
| [download .exe and run].
|
| I don't think opensource or the platform was an issue, since
| the original article was on a Mac.
|
| I'm happy to pay for good software, and Bvckup2 does an
| excellent job of backups for me. It's easy to point it to an
| empty directory tree and have it replicate the entire volume
| rapidly, or point it to a previous backup and update only the
| diffs. Fancier backup systems are of course available, but I
| prefer lightweight and straight copies, not extra compression
| or other formats. If you have something better, please let me
| know (definitely more helpful than merely complaining about
| features you don't like).
| AlphaWeaver wrote:
| The biggest gap I've noticed in SyncThing right now is that their
| iOS client doesn't work well. It's a third party solution you
| have to pay for, and it can't sync into app folders or the new
| iOS file paradigm introduced in recent versions of iOS.
| jarbus wrote:
| I'd love to switch over to SyncThing, but it would be next to
| useless on my iPad Pro, so I'm stuck using the incredibly buggy
| NextCloud filesync solution.
| josteink wrote:
| How so? There seems to be some third party
| client/implementation. Is there anything wrong or lacking
| with it?
|
| Asking as a Nextcloud (file only) user considering making a
| switch.
| benhurmarcel wrote:
| I guess you're talking about the client "Mobius Sync". I'll add
| that it's also not available in most countries, for some reason
| the developer restricted it in the App Store.
| devmunchies wrote:
| hmm.. yeah re: mobile, the downloads page[1] mentions android
| but no mention of ios. I would love to do something like this
| over icloud
|
| [1]: https://syncthing.net/downloads/
| bodge5000 wrote:
| Somewhat off topic, but does anyone have any recommendations for
| personal cloud storage. I've heard good things about Syncthing,
| but thats for syncing, not for storing. Preferably something as
| simple and easy to use/setup as possible. I want to use it mostly
| for storing old projects, I don't want it to be a project.
| k4rli wrote:
| Google One (Drive storage) is one of the cheapest (if not the
| cheapest) I think. Paying just 1.99 for 100GB monthly.
| LegitShady wrote:
| 100gb wasn't enough for me. A family subscription to office
| 365 offers each user 1tb of storage and the price is
| reasonable compared to the competition, especially if you're
| already ok with paying for Microsoft office.
| bodge5000 wrote:
| How does it compare to dropbox? I'm happy to pay a bit more
|
| I'd rather avoid Google if I could so I don't get further
| locked-in with them, but its a minor issue, and if they do
| end up being the best whilst keeping out my way then that
| sounds like a good deal to me
| turtlebits wrote:
| I find Wasabi (S3 compatible) to be the most useful. I'm paying
| $6 for ~400 GB of storage.
|
| I store/stream all my music there (use presigned URLs for
| playback).
|
| I find that most cloud storage deviate too much from a simple
| file management interface.
| awiesenhofer wrote:
| Hetzner offers hosted Nextcloud instances starting at 3.45EUR/m
| for 100gb:
|
| https://www.hetzner.com/storage/storage-share
| bodge5000 wrote:
| I have heard good things about Nextcloud, so this may be a
| winner. Cheers!
| 369548684892826 wrote:
| rclone is very good. Choose any cloud storage provider, and
| then run it through a nightly cronjob or whatever.
|
| https://rclone.org/
| bodge5000 wrote:
| Oh sorry, should've been clearer, I'm not looking for backup
| (I'm currently using backblaze for that), just general
| storage.
| dflock wrote:
| You can use rclone to mount cloud storage folders locally:
| https://rclone.org/commands/rclone_mount/
| [deleted]
| aembleton wrote:
| Wasabi is good because it has no egress charges and is only
| $6/month per TB: https://wasabi.com/cloud-storage-
| pricing/#three-info
| hwers wrote:
| I kind of agree with this article, but it's also sort of a
| hilarious repeat of the infamous one on the original dropbox HN
| post https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224
| poidos wrote:
| I switched to using maestral[0] on my mac and linux machines.
| Much friendlier to use than the dropbox client for both operating
| systems. My main fear with syncthing is relying on my own
| hardware, which is why I stick with Dropbox.
|
| [0]: https://maestral.app/
| lupajz wrote:
| Syncthing looks fun, is there any worthy iOS client?
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| It is unlikely to appear due to iOS's lack of real background
| processes.
| Tomte wrote:
| MobiusSync is good.
| rcarmo wrote:
| I'm trying this one, with mixed results:
| https://www.mobiussync.com/
| benhurmarcel wrote:
| Not available outside the US, strangely.
| josteink wrote:
| I found it in the AppStore searching for sync thing.
|
| Location: Norway.
| webdelv wrote:
| https://www.resilio.com/ is a good alternative which has an iOS
| app. But it won't sync until you open the app.
| keb_ wrote:
| Just want to come in here to say that Syncthing solved my note-
| taking app "problem" that I've been bothered with for years.
|
| I want my notes as plain text files (or Markdown files to be
| specific), and I'd like to sync them with my phone. I'd also like
| to use the text editor of _my choice_ to edit said text files.
| Cool, I just install Dropbox on my desktop, sync the files, and
| edit the files with Sublime Text. Oh but huh -- I can only edit
| the files on my phone using the Dropbox app, which doesn 't work
| when I'm offline or have spotty reception.
|
| I install Syncthing on my Windows PC (it runs the syncthing.exe
| on startup), install Syncthing and Editor[1] on my phone, and
| bam, now all my notes are synced directly to the filesystem of my
| Android phone and editable by any text editor I choose. As an
| added benefit, I still have a cloud sync on my PC, so the files
| are still backed up to a cloud service!
|
| [1] https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.billthefarmer.editor/
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| how do you handle images? This is why I use obsidian since it
| essentially manages images and keeps track of them for you.
| softwarebeware wrote:
| Drop the image in a known folder and use Markdown to include
| them in the notes
| keb_ wrote:
| I don't; as I mentioned, I only keep notes as plaintext
| files. Although there is nothing stopping me from just
| dropping image files in my notes folder.
| celeritascelery wrote:
| What are you using to install syncthing on your phone?
| Self-Perfection wrote:
| I use similar setup, though Markor as an editor. As syncthing
| app I use https://f-droid.org/packages/com.github.catfriend1.
| syncthing... and it works pretty good.
| ropeladder wrote:
| This is basically what I'm doing except I hate plain text
| editing on a phone touchscreen, so I switched to .org for notes
| and use orgzly on my phone (which provides a much nicer
| interface for navigation around files and for quick data entry,
| imo). Would love an equivalent phone app for markdown but I
| don't think any exist.
| rvieira wrote:
| Big fan of Syncthing.
|
| And although I agree with people saying that Syncthing and
| Dropbox are different things, truth is that Dropbox is unbearably
| bloated nowadays. The app breaks a lot, it's full of shiny
| useless stuff and it's not intuitive anymore. The other day I
| wanted to pause a big sync and spent a good minute trying to
| figure out where the button was hidden.
|
| Another example on how Syncthing is better than Dropbox at
| solving real problems: .stignore vs .... nothing.
| sva_ wrote:
| I was wondering how Synching finds another computer by the
| generated ID. Is there some central server or is it done using
| some kind of P2P swarm?
| danparsonson wrote:
| edit: ignore this, the software can relay connections when
| direct connection is impossible.
|
| Just found this in the FAQ:
|
| > If you see outgoing connections to odd and unexpected
| addresses these are most likely connections to relay servers.
| Relay servers are run by volunteers all over the world. They
| usually listen on ports 443 or 22067, though this is controlled
| by the user running it. You can compare the address you are
| concernced about with the current list of active relays. Relays
| do not and can not see the data transmitted via them.
|
| "P2P swarm" sounds about right?
| danparsonson wrote:
| Sorry this looks more relevant than my other comment - I really
| should finish reading before I post:
|
| https://docs.syncthing.net/users/stdiscosrv.html
|
| "Syncthing relies on a discovery server to find peers on the
| internet. Anyone can run a discovery server and point Syncthing
| installations to it. The Syncthing project also maintains a
| global cluster for public use."
| softwarebeware wrote:
| What's even easier and you don't need to install anything is
| plain SSH and rsync and scp and sshfs?
| choward wrote:
| Is this a troll comment? That's not even close to the same
| thing. Rsync and scp copy data from one computer to another in
| one direction. Scp would require you replacing entire
| directories. Both rsync and scp would need to be ran manually
| be the user.
|
| Sshfs doesn't sync files. You go offline and your files are
| gone.
| softwarebeware wrote:
| Most people's goal could be attained by a shared network
| drive is the point. "I have three computers at home. I just
| want them all to have the same folder that stays in sync no
| matter which computer I edit a file on."
|
| It amounts to about the same difference as the difference
| between DropBox and syncthing (e.g. they are not close to the
| same thing either but as far as a certain use case which is
| that of the vast majority of users...they are the same)
| EGreg wrote:
| _Syncthing has reminded me how great computers can be if they are
| not made by corporations. It's simple, predictable, sane, acts
| no-nonsense_
|
| Most open source software is like that. In this very article you
| see exactly what capitalism and the profit motive does to
| software.
|
| Ancaps will constantly say the refrain "this is due to
| government, and corporatism, which is very different from
| capitalism" but I insist -- do get into the details of how "pure"
| capitalism wouldn't lead to this.
|
| It is similar to how socialists always say about living in state
| socialism "it's not REAL socialism, if we ever reached REAL
| communism all these problems of the ovebearing government
| bureaucrat class would go away"
|
| Anyway... we do need an economic model to properly compensate
| open source, journalism and other work on digital content. I
| think that we can move past these issues with cryptocurrency,
| which can enable a form of socialism (the network is owned by the
| users) while compensating people fairly for their work. See for
| example https://qbix.com/QBUX/whitepaper.html#Monetizing-Open-
| Source for details on how a micropayment system could actually
| work !
| pphysch wrote:
| > cryptocurrency, which can enable a form of socialism
|
| When you twist "socialism" into some libertarian ideal of flat
| & free markets, you lose a lot of meaning.
|
| Public blockchains behave similar to free markets, and have the
| same oft-ignored flaws. Namely, you need to trust that the
| market/blockchain is not de facto ruled by a shadowy cartel.
| This is often a poor assumption, because power consolidates
| over time. You also need to trust that the underlying
| currencies and protocols are secure. This is easier to do than
| the former, but still a significant vulnerability.
| EGreg wrote:
| I like to use mainstream definitions that are in
| dictionaries, strip away all the rhetoric and focus only on
| substance, precise descriptive language and meaningful
| predictions: property X usually leads to outcome Y.
|
| Here is the first definition of Socialism from Google: _a
| political and economic theory of social organization which
| advocates that the means of production, distribution, and
| exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a
| whole._
|
| Here is what Wikipedia says: _Socialism is a political,
| social, and economic philosophy encompassing a range of
| economic and social systems characterised by social
| ownership[1][2][3][4] of the means of production.[5][6][7][8]
| It includes the political theories and movements associated
| with such systems.[9] Social ownership can be public,
| collective, cooperative, or of equity.[10] While no single
| definition encapsulates the many types of socialism,[11]
| social ownership is the one common element._
|
| Sounds to me like this definition fits many Web3 crypto
| projects (like FileCoin etc) almost like a glove. Compare
| that to Web2 (basically all Big Tech companies) in which
| venture capitalists make early investments in shares (instead
| of tokens), prop up money-losing unit economics fo years,
| then dump the shares on the public in an IPO and Wall Street
| bigwigs who buy shares (instead of tokens) can thus force
| management to keep their backend source closed, their server
| farms centralized and extract rents forever, from users and
| advertisers etc. in order to satisfy wall street quarterly
| earnings goals.
|
| It is fashionable in the USA to associate Socialism with
| State Socialism -- and impugn to Socialism all the famines
| etc. done by governments claiming to enforce it (like
| holodomor and China's famines under Mao due to enforced
| collectivization)
|
| ...while dissociating Capitalism from State Capitalism --
| neatly blaming it on "Corporatism" -- and avoid having to
| answer for similar things done by governments to enforce it
| (like the various famines under the British Raj in India and
| Begal region, and the Irish Potato famine which was
| perpetuated primarily BECAUSE of government enforcing the
| private property rights of landlords even over the basic
| survival needs of peasant tenants).
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_(Ireland)
|
| Both capitalism and socialism taken too far and using too
| much force to enforce the system can have bad consequences.
| But there are libertarian versions of both. Google
| "libertarian socialism" to find things like kibbutzim,
| moshavim, housing cooperatives, food cooperatives, as well as
| credit unions etc. These are all examples of socialism
| without the state. And many times they have far better
| outcomes than their capitalist counterparts (landlord-owned
| buildings, commercial banks etc.)
|
| Remember that _socialism can be embedded in markets_. But
| socialist organizations have no profit motive and no class
| warfare between landlords and tenants, shareholders and
| customers, because they are one and the same. So the
| organization tends to have some democratic governance
| mechanism (governance tokens, DAOs... are you starting to get
| it now?)
| thom wrote:
| I suppose I've just become used to saying no to a bunch of things
| when installing Dropbox, but once that's done I have no
| interactions with it at all. I don't remember being pestered at
| any point recently and I've got it on three devices. I keep
| waiting for it to annoy me in some way that causes me to find
| another solution but it's yet to happen. I migrated several G
| Suite accounts to Fastmail recently so I suspect it's my longest
| running paid subscription at this point.
| Strilanc wrote:
| Personally I've noticed how dropbox has gone from being a tool
| that fits well into a larger context, to instead trying to
| encompass the entire experience of touching synced files. For
| example, the number of clicks (and the precision of those
| clicks and the distractions around them) to open the dropbox
| folder in your OS's file explorer has gradually increased. And
| the amount of attention dropbox asks for, things like
| notifications and upsells, has also gradually increased.
|
| The post aludes to this notion of not trusting dropbox to just
| do the one thing well, and instead expecting them to grab more
| and more (because they are financially driven to do so), which
| resonated very hard. It's so common for a good piece of
| software to get worse and worse, bit by bit, as the marketing
| and business downsides consume the technical upsides.
| julik wrote:
| Coming from a similar background product-wise: the struggle
| is real, and while file syncing and sharing is great and
| achievable it only allows you N user retention/acquisition,
| and thus M profit potential. If you (or your investors)
| demand M*1000 of that, you start looking for a way to usurp
| not only the user's file syncing needs, but also document
| editing, calendars, email, contacts, backup... anything that
| is within reach. This is exacerbated by the fact that more
| and more vendors (such as Adobe and Figma) drive away from
| "files", which effectively forces you to use _their_ cloud
| storage solution. When you are Dropbox this is not a very
| sweet spot to be in, because Adobe has _both_ the apps for
| creating projects _and_ the storage/sync, but you only have
| storage/sync.
|
| As long as cloud storage needs to grow exponentially at any
| cost, feature bloat of the kind Nikita is describing will
| continue. Most likely Syncthing is so good exactly because
| they do not have these extrinsic pressures.
|
| Add to that the fact that in a bigger product org, the way
| you get promoted is by shipping "your" feature. Quite often
| it would be a feature no user would ever want, but it is much
| more the problem of selling "your" feature to management
| internally versus selling it directly to the user.
|
| A great example of a solution which is local-first, allows
| you BYO cloud storage (of multiple kinds) and simply offers
| its own cloud storage at a small markup is Arq, and we are
| blessed that it does not have the pressures I have described
| above.
| thom wrote:
| It's one click to get to your Dropbox folder though, what's
| changed there? Besides I just have some symlinks to point at
| it and I never think about manually going there again. I
| dunno if I'm just already on the top tier of subscriptions
| but I get zero upsell or notifications after it's installed
| and configured. I'd certainly love it if everything was off
| by default but it's not really any hardship to go through the
| preferences.
|
| Obviously the moment it stops just sitting there backing up
| my files and keeping them in sync across my devices I'd be
| bothered, but whatever they're trying to force on people
| hasn't really registered with me in a decade of use.
| magicalhippo wrote:
| I'm about to drop Dropbox as well, due to how PITA it is to
| use.
|
| Have a picture in your Dropbox you want to send as a message
| on Android? Well, just click Share button of course! Wait,
| no, that just shares a link not the image itself...
|
| No, you gotta do "Open with...", find suitable image app
| (gallery or picture viewer), wait for it to download and open
| the image, and share from that app...
|
| Though I imagine Dropbox would be glad to get rid of me, not
| being a paying customer. I don't need 2TB so $10/mo is way
| too much.
| thom wrote:
| On iOS you just tap the Dropbox icon and browse to the
| picture you want to send in the messages app. Surprised
| it's harder on a more open platform.
| feisar wrote:
| Why did i not know of this sooner? Great software no problems
| here.
| kangaroozach wrote:
| How can one easily use Syncthing with the cloud?
|
| Is there an easy way to sync via FTP to a cloud folder on a
| managed or shared server?
|
| Is there a sync to AWS S3 option?
| pjerem wrote:
| You install it on the server and you set it up as you would
| with any other computer. A Syncthing in the "cloud" is just a
| Syncthing client running on an always on computer.
| Louno wrote:
| On MacOS, using Maestral.app made my Dropbox experience a lot
| better. Well, it's still dropbox behind, but the app itself is
| way lighter and nicer to use.
| newaccount74 wrote:
| The best thing about Syncthing is that it does not require
| accounts!
|
| With iCloud and Dropbox (and SaaS in general), everything is
| linked to your user account. They assume that each computer is
| used by exactly one user.
|
| But that just doesn't match my reality! At home we have a shared
| computer in the living room, and at work we have build servers
| shared by multiple people.
|
| I really don't want to sign in with my personal Apple ID or
| Dropbox account on a shared computer.
|
| With Syncthing that doesn't matter. I can just sync a single
| folder, and syncthing doesn't care who that folder belongs to and
| doesn't require granting access to unrelated folders that happen
| to belong to the same user.
| Breazy wrote:
| > _They assume that each computer is used by exactly one user._
|
| It's not so much that they assume it.. they leave that feature
| out deliberately so they can up-sell you to 'Dropbox Family' or
| 'Dropbox Business'. This is a great example of the commercial
| incentives for Dropbox degrading the user experience.
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